In this second section we continue our quest to navigate the Monopoly Board using only images held in the Crace Collection of antiquarian prints and maps held by the British Museum. By doing so we will find out whether an 1850s Londoner could have made sense of the streets and enclaves immortalised when this iconic board game first appeared in its London format in 1936. We shall wend our way from Pall Mall up to Free Parking, constituting the half-way point – but will our journey founder upon the altar of modernity? Highlights include a fond farewell to Carlton House, a fruitless search for Marylebone Station and a daring escape from Bow Street Police Station:

Pall Mall

This scene looking east down Pall Mall -with Carlton House immediately on the right and the colonnade to the opera house on the left, was published in Ackerman’s Repository of the Arts magazine in 1822. It shows Pall Mall during a time of great change. Carlton House was entering its last days, but the Royal Opera Arcade (built in 1818 and still here today) was the shape of things to come – for Pall Mall was to be an integral part of George IV’s vision of a new London – which was made real over a decade of great change for this locality.

Pall Mall was originally built in 1661, though a thoroughfare existed here since Saxon times – and its adoption as a roadway in 1662 made it the official route between St James’ Palace and the Mall. Just a few years earlier this strip of land had been fenced off and used as a ‘pelemele court’ by Charles II – but this early version of croquet was often spoiled by dust blown over by carriages passing on the adjacent lane-way – so the loss of this sporting venue was largely unlamented. Almost as soon as it was paved over, this new street became known as ‘Pall Mall’, a name it retains to this day.

South Front of Carlton House (1819)

When the Prince Regent became King George IV in 1820 he was living at Carlton House, and this continued to operate as his principal London residence until 1826 when he moved to newly refurbished and extended Buckingham Palace. His association with Carlton House began in 1783, and within a few years the then Prince of Wales transformed the mansion along French neoclassical lines. During its lifetime Carlton House’s ambition was only constricted by the size of the Prince’s debts – meaning that it endured bursts of intense re-modelling sandwiched between periods of relative calm. Over time this mansion became one of the most important venues for entertainment and pleasure amongst the ruling elite. Consequently Carlton House’s fall from grace in just 5 years seems drastic – but it was quite typical of George to switch the focus of his creative attention elsewhere. Once he decided upon Buckingham Palace, and appointed Nash to undertake its rebuilding, Carlton House was living on borrowed time. George IV’s other great passion was the development of London along classical lines – and his desire to link Regent Street with the Mall meant that Carlton House needed to go. On March 30th 1826 The Times reported

Carlton House will be taken down at the latter end of the ensuing summer, and preparations are now being made for the temporary reception of the furniture belonging to that royal residence, till the new palace at Buckingham House is completed. On the ground opened by the removal of Carlton House, many noble edifices are to be erected, all of which are to be occupied by our first Nobility… It is also likely that a Club House, for the United Service Club, enlarged and on a much greater scale than heretobefore, will stand in this area. There is to be an opening into [St James’] Park which will be a striking improvement: from this (turning to the right) will be a noble row of architectural houses facing the canal. These will stand on a terrace, and stretch from the opening (at Waterloo Place) to the Ordnance Office… occupying the present gardens of Carlton House – now bounded by the dead wall towards the ride in the Park.

United Service Club, Pall Mall

The United Services Club was completed by 1829 (when this Thomas Hosmer Shepherd image was drawn), surviving until the late 1970s, and the building is still there today as part of the Institute of Directors. As for Carlton House – its famous front facade – reused for the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, is still a pleasing sight today.

For my final word on Carlton House, I must defer to His Majesty George IV, and a newspaper clipping from The Age March 9th 1828, demonstrating the King’s emotional attachment to his old home

Adieu to Carlton House – by George IV (Allegedly)

We are informed that his Majesty, since his arrival in Town, made a pilgrimage to the ruins of his old Palace, scarcely a vestige of which now remains. On his return to St James’, his spirits were much depressed, when he retired to his own apartment. The above elegy was found upon the table

The Lothians Blogspot has written a very detailed and interesting history of the rise and fall of Carlton House

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Electric Company

Finding an electric company in 1850s London was, not surprisingly, a difficult task. For this I was fortunate to locate just one suitable print from the 5000+ held in the Crace Collection – to enable us to progress further

This particular scene from 1852 shows two views of the time-ball on top of a turret in the Strand; the view on the left including the Electric Telegraph Company’s offices, and on the right a close-up of the time-ball on top of the turret. Clearly, electrical power was in its infancy by the 1850s. A quick trawl of the newspapers shows that the Electrical Telegraph Company spent a great deal of its early existence dealing with court cases relating to patents for its new technology. It claimed to own no less than 40 of its own patents, but I think this indicates that electrical power was being developed by a wide number of groups simultaneously. For, as early as 1838 London hosted a meeting of the Electrical Society at which Mr Crosse gave a full account of his electrical experiments. The Society itself was formed to ‘for the purpose of explaining and making public the mysteries’ of electricity, so we can imagine this encouraged more widespread interest and investment in this nascent technology. Thus, a Victorian landing upon Electric Company may be ignorant of what it entailed, but not unaware that electrical power was in the process of development

Thus, on August 19th 1852, The Times reported on the new electric time ball installed in the Strand (pictured above)

After a satisfactory completion of the requisite arrangements which had for some time been pending between the Electric Telegraph Company and the Astronomer Royal at Greenwich, Mr Edwin Clark [was entrusted for] the construction of the ingenious apparatus for the development of the electric telegraph system, as applied to the regulation of time on a plan for distributing and correcting mean Greenwich time in London and… throughout the UK every day at 1 o’clock

Perhaps the most important outcome of this new development was the standardisation of time throughout the UK – which would have been of massive benefit to the railways – ensuring that timetables would be accurate to a specific location, namely Greenwich mean time. For Victorian Britain, this was to be a significant shift towards modernity

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Whitehall

One of the most frequent images found in the Crace Collection is that of the Banqueting House at Whitehall – famous for being the place where Charles I was beheaded in 1649 – when Britain entered a period of commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell (who coincidentally took up residence in Whitehall thereafter). There has been a roadway at Whitehall since the 12th century, but it most likely adopted its name from the Palace of Whitehall, which was the residence of English Kings from Henry VIII to William III. The building burned down in 1698 – apart from the before-mentioned Banqueting House which is still with us today. The above image shows Whitehall and the Horse Guards circa 1811, and we can see that at that time is was still little more than a dirt track

As is is today, Whitehall was synonymous with the heart of Government in Victorian times – housing numerous Departments of State including the Admiralty, the Horse Guards and the Treasury.

A view of the Admiralty, 1818

This view from the street of the Admiralty in Whitehall comes from Ackermann’s Repository of the Arts , showing the arched entrance to the forecourt and screen wall. This three-sided building (not to be confused with the Admiralty Arch at Trafalgar Square) was constructed in 1726 to a design by Thomas Ripley, but was instantly criticised for its baroque-style which was thought out-moded by the new fashion for Palladianism. However it has endured until today, and it is thought to be the first ever purpose-built office. Thoughtfully renamed the Ripley Building, this property is now used by the Department for International Development

Unlike us, the Victorians would have also associated Whitehall with the River Thames. Its piers were important departure points for both Government and Royalty – most notably serving as the main exit route for important personages fleeing London during the Great Plague in 1665. By the 1830s Whitehall even had its own annual regatta – traditionally held in July – a contest for double scullers, offering various prizes put forward by noblemen and gentry. On July 17th 1843 The Morning Post reported

Amongst the nobility and gentry who subscribed to the regatta for men plying at Whitehall stairs, were his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch and Sir Robert Peel… the race was contested on Friday, with six pairs of sculls in two heats. At an early hour in the afternoon the whole of the men started… at half past six the final was held, four were afloat to race from the Duke of Buccleuch’s, down round the Thames… up round Westminster Bridge, and finish at Whitehall. T Piner junior retained the lead and won by a length and a half… his father finished in third.

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Northumberland Avenue

This is the first serious stumbling block on our journey around the early Victorian monopoly board, because Northumberland Avenue was not built until 1876, following the demolition of Northumberland House near Charing Cross. This image from 1826 shows Northumberland House in the background with an equestrian statue of Charles I on the right and the Golden Cross Coaching Inn on the left. However, we must recall that Northumberland Street (to the rear of the mansion) already existed in 1850 – and the House itself was a well-known landmark to the south of Trafalgar Square – meaning that most Victorians would have known where to go to locate ‘Northumberland Avenue’ on their Monopoly Board.

Northumberland House – James Green (1761)

Northumberland House, built in 1605 to a Jacobean style, lay on a roadway down to the busy wharfs of the Thames serving Charing Cross and Westminster. But as Northumberland Street became increasingly commercialised this mansion eventually became the last bastion of residential homes which once lined that street. After the 1820s the Duke of Northumberland came under increasing pressure to sell his mansion to the Metropolitan Board of Works, who wished to build a new, wider road down to the river. But the Duke was unwilling to leave his ancestral home and resisted all overtures – until disaster forced his hand. On August 22nd 1868 Bell’s Life in London reported

Shortly before midnight on Thursday last the town residence of the Duke of Northumberland was discovered to be on fire. Five steam engines were quickly on the spot, but the flames were not extinguished until the roof of the south-west wing, used as a ball-room, was burned off, paintings, furniture, and decorations partly destroyed… with confectionery rooms underneath damaged by fire and water. Fortunately the drawing room, dining room, marble staircase, and upper suite of saloons and valuable paintings have escaped destruction. though some splendid friezes have been more of less injured… but these are insured… Workmen employed at the house are supposed to have caused the fire.

As a consequence of this carnage, the Duke of Northumberland agreed to sell his mansion for £500,000 – a colossal sum by today’s standards (perhaps £50M) – paving the way for Northumberland Avenue to appear on the London map

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Marylebone Station

The only station serving the parish of Marylebone in the 1850s was at King’s Cross, so a Victorian would have scratched his head at the thought of another station in that area. However, such was the craze for railroads in mid-Victorian times, that no Victorian would have been entirely surprised at the thought of one springing up in the heart of Marylebone. But no such station appeared – and until the 1890s Euston, King’s Cross and Paddington became the key transport hubs for that area.

A trawl of the Crace collection finds just one image of a railway in Marylebone – which is an 1837 view from beneath the Hampstead Road Bridge looking towards Euston Station, as a steam train comes into view. It looks like the rush hour that day for we can see a queue carriages and waggons on the bridge – though we also have a hot air balloon high in the sky above – so not everyone is at work. There is so much to see in this 180-year-old scene – which convinces me to go on from this setback and see what else confounds us on our journey.

Never a real London landmark – Marylebone Station

As for Marylebone Station, we must halt a while to question why that poorest relation of all London mainline stations should ever have been included in the 1936 Monopoly board game. This station only opened in 1899 as the London terminus of the Great Central Main Line, being the last major railway to open in Britain in over 100 years, linking the capital to Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester. Marylebone was always too small to compete with its rivals, poorly conceived in relation to connection with tube stations already in operation nearby – and must be considered a failed vanity-project. It never really had a heyday and was lucky to survive complete closure in the 1980s.- ironically saved by public appeal.

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Bow Street

We’ve had a real wobble on our last two stops round our Victorian monopoly board, so its great to land back on more secure ground at Bow Street, a roadway situated just south of Covent Garden, parallel to the Strand – which has been around since the 1630s. Once a home for London’s aristocrats, by the 1750s Bow Street had declined into a seedy area frequented by journalists and prostitutes (rather fittingly), as well as lodgings for actors serving theatres in Covent Garden and Drury Lane. But its decline was halted after a magistrates court was built there in 1740, and a decade later the novelist Henry Fielding established the Bow Street Runners – a kind of embryonic vigilante group – paid to catch and convict miscreants. This 1825 view by James Winston shows the old police office used by the Bow Street Runners. Even after the newly-founded Metropolitan Police built their own station at Bow Street in 1832 – the Runners continued to operate – but they disbanded in 1839 as proper policing became established.

On September 5th 1825 The Times reported upon a daring escape attempt made from the Bow Street Police Office:

Mary Anne Smith, a woman of about 25 years of age, was committed to the House of Correction, for an assault upon a watchman. Previously to her removal she was locked up in the gaol yard [which is] about 20 or 30 feet square and surrounded by a brick wall about 20 feet in height, and it was over this formidable barrier that the prisoner Smith resolved to effect her liberation. Taking advantage of the temporary absence of the gaoler she placed a wooden bench, upon which the prisoners it, upright, and using this as a ladder… thence to gain the top of the wall. From here she made her way over house and chimney-top until she entered a window at Mr Day, boot-maker in Russell Street. From the window she made a dangerous leap over an interval descending the whole depth of that building – had she missed her footing instant death would have bee the consequence. The gaoler followed close behind fell and for some time hung on for his life at the ledge of the window… The woman got to the street door where she met Mr Day – to him she confessed her purpose and he told her the best place for concealment was the cellar – but officers then arrived at the house and secured the prisoner… The poor creature stated that she had been driven to risk her life on account of two infants who depended upon her, their father having died three weeks ago.

This desperately sad story has a compassionate ending for the chief officer at Bow Street, Mr Minshull ‘with a suitable admonition, humanely ordered her to be discharged. He considered the terror at the situation which her hazardous enterprise evinced, would operate to deter any future offence.’ We don’t know what became of Mary Anne Smith, but she went into the record books as the first person to successfully effect an escape from Bow Street police station.

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Marlborough Street

Our next port of call is Marlborough Street, where we find our subject remains police-related. This Thomas Hosmer Shepherd painting from 1854 shows the front of a Police Office on the north side of Marlborough Street, with a few police officers standing by the entrance. These police certainly look pretty much how we would imagine Victorian ‘Peelers’ would be. Marlborough Street first made an appearance on 1704 and lies in Soho just south of Oxford Street. Perhaps its most famous building nowadays is Liberty Store which stands on the junction with Regent Street.

Marlborough Street has a Police Office from around 1800, which also served as a magistrates court. Quite often the court dealt with the very lowest section of society – committing to prison petty thieves, drunks and beggars. These cases often attracted little attention – it was only when the rich or powerful got involved, that press coverage was guaranteed. One such occasion was in 1826 when a case was brought on by the Mendacity Society, against an 80-year-old tramp. She was defended by Lord Maryborough ‘with a zeal, feeling, and good sense, which would be a credit and ornament to any man’. Ellen Goodall’s crime was to stand with her hand out near Hanover Square – considered as begging – and despite Maryborough’s involvement she was sentenced to a fortnight in prison.

The idle rich had no respect for the police

Marlborough Street also had a long and chequered history of dealing with badly behaved aristocrats, whose lenient treatment proved a stark contrast to the often savage sentences meted out upon the poor. Young bucks enjoyed nights out on the Town, usually getting drunk, and then proceeding to beat or attack person positions in authority. It was almost a right-of-passage for young Lords to misbehave and behave antisocially on London’s streets – knowing full well they would escape the consequences. For example, on June 22nd 1825 the Morning Post reported

Yesterday Lord Harborough was charged by a watchman with having violently assaulted him at Steven’s Hotel in Bond Street…. striking him several times with a poker… and his fists… to wound him most severely. [He] was very noisy in the street… On the other hand, a Gentleman, who was looking out of the window at the time, deposed that no such noise had been made… the the Gentleman had been willing to come forward to answer any charge… and that he was only resisting attacks by the watchman, who outrageously rushed into the Coffee Room upon him, and then the alleged assault had been committed.

Not surprisingly the (probably paid) witness swayed the case and the Magistrate bailed Lord Harborough pending further investigation. Given that the watchman would not have had the means to proceed, we must assume that this arrogant toff went unpunished – reinforcing the ingrained injustice of our legal system at that time.

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Vine Street – (Lambeth not Piccadilly)

This is a peculiar step on our journey because Vine Street is probably the most obscure location to be found on the Monopoly board – being a very tiny cul-de-sac to the rear of Piccadilly. In the days before Regent Street this was a much longer road, and it would certainly have been well-known to Victorians on account of Vine Street Police Station, founded around 1750, which grew from a watch-house into one of the busiest police stations in the world, and sat alongside a court-house which was active throughout the Victorian era. Bow Street, Marlborough Street and Vine Street share an association with law courts – and this explains why they were grouped together in the orange section of a Monopoly board.

There is no question that Vine Street was recognisable to Victorian Londoners – but they would have instantly asked: Which One? For London had a second Vine Street just south of the river in Lambeth and was the main thoroughfare towards Hungerford Bridge, which was opened in 1845. This Vine Street was engulfed by a natural disaster which occurred on January 29th 1850

The tide rose so extraordinarily high as to overflow the walls of the river and inundate the various thoroughfares along either shore. So unexpected was the high tide that no one had made any preparation to preserve their property, and the consequence was that mischief to an incalculable amount was done… The first notice the inhabitants received of this fearful visitation was shortly after three o’clock – about half an hour before high water. At that period water began to flow over the banks.. and in the space of ten minutes it became apparent that a fearful destruction of property, if not human life, was inevitable. The various wharfs along the river soon presented immense sheets of water, timber, and other articles being forced about with the strength of the tide in terrible confusion… The property destroyed in Lambeth Parish must reach many thousand pounds… The whole of Vine Street was one great expanse of water, and the only means for the residents to leave their habitations were in boats… The water travelled as far as the terminus of the South Western Railway, in York Road. In Vine Street it rushed into kitchens, and forced the furniture up to the ceilings. In one house three children nearly perished; their mother being upstairs… hearing them scream, she rushed downstairs and found the water half way to the ceiling, and the children up to their necks in water…

The great flood as seen from Lambeth Stairs (1850)

This upper Thames flood was recorded as the worst for 50 years, and helped to accelerate two major improvements – firstly the construction of embankments on either side of the Thames, which vastly improved flood defences; and secondly; the improvement in London’s sewage management. Just a few weeks before this flood, MPs debated the awful problem of pollution on the Thames and how it could be alleviated. To have that dank and deadly water overspill into homes and businesses so soon afterwards must have been a catalyst for change, and began London’s long road towards environmental recovery

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Free Parking

Free Parking was probably a bit of a bonus in 1936 as London was already well accustomed to traffic gridlock. Today it is just a pipe-dream for London’s motorists, used to Congestion Charging, Residential Parking Permits, Red Routes, and Pay-by-Phone extortion – should they ever decide to travel in by car. For the Victorians parking was never an issue, but they would have been accustomed to knowing where to find parked hansom cabs in order to travel from A to B – and these would have commonly been found outside hotels and inns, stations, shops and businesses. Above we see a view of Oxford Street in 1831 – with carriages waiting outside Stafford House – ready for hire.

Let’s wait until the next segment before we catch our taxi onwards to cross the Victorian Monopoly Board, and conclude this second part by reflecting upon a difficult journey, which began at Pall Mall and had us lost for a while in Northumberland Avenue and Marylebone Station, before putting us back on surer, more familiar territory amongst the orange enclave – which last delivered us safely to ‘Free Parking’.